The Mathematics and Economics of Pizza Sizes
When you buy a pizza, the various cost / size options can be hard to digest. If a 9 inch pizza costs x and a 12 inch pizza costs y, how much better value is the 12 inch pizza? if at all? The answer is...
View ArticleThe Solitaire Encryption Algorithm by Bruce Schneier
Solitaire is an encryption algorithm designed by Bruce Schneier and was featured in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon under the name Pontifex. It is an output-feedback stream cipher which involves...
View ArticleProblems with Bruce Schneier’s “Solitaire” by P. Crowley
Paul Crowley’s Problems with Bruce Schneier’s “Solitaire” presents evidence of a bias in Bruce Schneier’s Solitaire encryption algorithm. Crowley identifies that successive keystream outputs of...
View ArticleBroadcast Attacks on Stream Ciphers
In Cryptanalysis of the Stream Cipher DECIM (section 5.2), Wu and Preneel describe a broadcast attack on stream ciphers with single-bit keystream biases. It works as follows. Suppose that each bit of a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The ATM Cave Belize: Into Mayan Hell
While staying in San Ignacio, Belize, we took a guided tour of the Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) cave, named the #1 Sacred Cave to Visit in the World by National Geographic. It was expensive at US$95...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chocolate Mayan-Style at ChocoMuseo, Antigua
This afternoon we took a chocolate workshop at ChocoMuseo in Antigua, Guatemala. ChocoMuseo offers several workshops. We chose to do their most popular one: from the Cacao Bean to the Chocolate Bar....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mayan Infused Chocolate Tea
Here is a recipe for a heady, theobromine-rich Mayan chocolate tea that I learned during our chocolate workshop in Antigua. The measurements are my guesses as to how much went in. The tea doesn’t seem...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mayan Hot Chocolate
Here is the recipe for the spicy Mayan hot chocolate that we made in our chocolate workshop in Antigua. While the Mayans used to add blood when offering this to their Gods, we used Aztec trick of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Traditional Spanish Hot Chocolate
In our Antiguan Chocolate Workshop we were taught the following recipe for hot chocolate, a Spanish adaptation on the traditional Mayan drink. We made it with milk, which wasn’t the traditional...
View ArticleA Sharper Focus for the Calcatraz Blog
I’ve been doing a bit of soul-searching in order to come up with a more focused theme for this blog. Up until now, I’ve been writing about a variety of subjects that have piqued my interest or...
View Article